https://uomlibrary.github.io/workshop-tei/setup.html

“Episode 1 has a puzzle exercise (fill the blanks) which can worth better on paper”
work?

I can’t download any of the files from this page, but I can download them from the Episodes section.

https://uomlibrary.github.io/workshop-tei/reference.html

Introduction to TEI. “It is used for metadata, transcription, detailed descriptions and linking.”

What do you mean by “metadata” here? This is an issue for us: we understand “metadata” to refer to the TEI header, the bibliographic information so to speak, but we never use it to refer to the transcription itself, the TEI body

cf. passage in https://uomlibrary.github.io/workshop-tei/01-introduction/index.html
“Of course we already have interoperable cataloguing languages (such as MARC and EAD) but TEI provides the richness of metadata along with scholarly information which makes it an peerless researcher/educational tool.”

Elements and Attributes.

The two bullet points end with a note “FIXME”. Is that meant to be still there? (Also in other places, guess it’s provisional)

https://uomlibrary.github.io/workshop-tei/figures/index.html

and: https://uomlibrary.github.io/workshop-tei/01-introduction/index.html

Fig. 7, right hand side. The closing tags (light orange figures) should include the forward slash, e.g. /salute, /opener, /orig, /reg, /choice etc.

Fig. 7, left hand side. The double quotation marks enclosing attributes are curly rather than straight.

https://uomlibrary.github.io/workshop-tei/01-introduction/index.html

Subsection XML content and elements: “Every element has an opening and closing ‘tag’.”

As pointed out elsewhere in the website and in the following sentence in this same paragraph, most do but not all the elements. Perhaps rephrase?

“then the content in double quotes”

these should be straight quotes (which oXygen does automatically, but still)

On front/back. That’s accurate as far as TEI goes, but in our project we have been advised to leave them out because MDC can’t cope with these elements. Just mentioning it in case it’s relevant for other projects, too.

Section “Transcription and intellectual metadata”,

the image displaying on this page belongs to HAM/1/10/1/11, as indicated below the image, but the hyperlink above the image, where it says “made available online” links to a different letter. Should it be the same one? It would be:
https://www.projects.alc.manchester.ac.uk/maryhamiltonpapers/letter/HAM-1-10-1-11

Just a quick update on how I got on with the TEI training. I meant to write you back earlier, apologies for the delay.

I mentioned that I would give feedback to Phil Reed regarding the resource he was creating for LibraryCarpentries. Hope it’s not too late.
As you said, the contents were based on the sessions you organised so I could follow it very easily. I guess because it’s ‘work at your own pace’, I found the steps and language very accessible.

I am familiar with markup languages but didn’t know how it fits into TEI so It’s clear now, thank you.

I also completed the online version of the Textual Editing course run by Newcastle, I really enjoyed that!

If there are training opportunities for staff on XML encoding or TEI, I’d be interested to learn and participate.

For now, many thanks for sharing once again.

The licence description is adapted from Software/Library Carpentry. The original lesson templates are CC BY 4.0. Much of the transcription and other materials used are available CC BY-NC 3.0 or 4.0.

Has this been described accurately and clearly on the licence page and within each lesson?

General points

As a shareable teaching workshop with actual TEI metadata and images from UoM special collections it offers an invaluable resource. It is designed to be delivered as a series of 3 workshops led by an instructor who has a good grasp of TEI and XML.

Lianne, Donna and I tested it to see if it could work as an online resource in which members of SC could work through remotely on their own.

We concluded that the introduction section (with some tweak and additional explanation) could work as a standalone self-guided intro but that the other sections were too difficult. Section 2 would be understandable to curators confident in EAD, the final section which looked at Locus and manifests is highly specialist and probably only needed by metadata cataloguers and those involved in the ingest process into MDC

Curators familiar with EAD will find this fairly straightforward – others in the SC team will find it much more of a challenge

Overall we felt that its best suited to a workshop environment as when you get stuck it’s very hard to progress and stay motivated on your own

Another barrier was working on a small laptop – quite difficult to see everything. Ideally two screens would make it easier so you can have Oxygen open on big screen and instructions on lap top. With one screen it gets tedious trying to go between the two. We also missed having paper copies, scissors and coloured pens!

We felt that the largest barrier would be familiarity and confidence in using an XML editor. We appreciate that the workshop is about TEI and can thus be used with any number of editors, but for our local SC audience the session needs to start with Oxygen. Perhaps send the TEI Latin Mss at the start and get people familiar with importing into Oxygen and talk through what they will see on screen and how it all works

Are there videos/quick start guides for Oxygen

We wondered about a series of screen shots – or having a video in which an instructor demonstrates how it works

Section by section comments

1 Introduction to TEI

• What is TEI?
• How is TEI constructed?
• How is TEI used?

Good clear explanations of what TEI is and how its used

Puzzle section – ideally you need a printer and to be able to cut it out. As a minimum you need to cut out the 10 tags that require placing on the screen (use blue tack/sellotape). Many of us won’t have a colour printer at home

Jargon busting section – we really liked that – especially the ‘boilerplate’! perhaps put jargon section earlier

Also really liked how you explain why we are using TEI and MDC, how it enables curator and academic to collaborate and how metadata can be readily shared and enhanced.

Link to Cambridge casebook project good – we need to inspire folk working through these workshops on their own. At times it felt a little dry and this is a problem with an online resource. In person the enthusiasm and energy of the workshop leader can keep everyone upbeat
Section on format specific schemas was useful – I learned a new word ‘epigraphic’

Useful that TEI was also a community and a set of guidelines – liked link to version 5

XML structure – homework part one

First hitch I encountered. ‘Save link as’ in Explorer it was ‘save target as’ sounds minor but it threw me

Also needed more text here as I saved my file but then I went straight on to the next instruction. Ie I didn’t navigate to file and then open in Oxygen and then go back to the instructions
Better and more detailed instructions during this exercise would be really helpful. It might be an idea to send the TEI file to our workshop attendees in advance and tell them to create a TEI folder that they can readily navigate to.

We also felt that screen shots would massively help with this section – so that the attendee would know what it looked like in Oxygen. The instructions were not intuitive or clear. Another way around could be a video of the instructor demonstrating the actions with a voice over.
Finding Msdesc was not easy the first time I tried. Screenshots and better instructions needed
Finding the 5 nested elements was fine once you had clicked on MdDec and it had gone blue on the central section of screen

Here working on a small laptop was gruelling – 2 screen set up would be much better

SOLUTION – currently empty, no answers. This needs adding. We all thought that it was better to give the answers here than at the start of the next workshop

We liked the key points recap section – more of these

Homework XML content, elements and attributes

Again the solution section is empty – again we think it should be here and not at the start of the next workshop

We were able to work through this fine and learned some useful things

2 Elements and Attributes

• How do I mark up a description?
• How do I validate my markup?

The curators in the testing group thought this section was fine and we were able to work through it. We thought it would be better in a class room setting. We particularly missed not having a printer and coloured highlighters to hand.

Perhaps the trick and tips for using Oxygen could be introduced earlier – at least some of it could go into first section. It felt like it arrived too late.

Key points – currently a draft version so need some work but we liked idea of reinforcing what are the key points for this section.

3 Descriptions and Cataloguing

• How do you mark up a locus?
• How do you link a locus?
• How do manifests work?
• How do I select and use authorities, and why should I use them?

This section was highly specialist and it seemed unlikely that anyone at SC UoM would need to know it beyond the metadata cataloguers and the staff involved in transferring files into MDC.
So I am sorry we stopped at section two

Having looked through it We did find it useful to know what locus are and why we need manifests

The episode texts have been adapted from PowerPoint slides and other notes. There are instances where they need to have more descriptive prose (context), more details/context and also need to make sense to people outside of Manchester. Episode 1 is the most polished.

The episodes are delivered several weeks apart, to fit in with learners' time commitments. Each episode ends by setting homework for the learners to complete in their own time. There is time at the start of the following episode to discuss the recent homework (what challenges they had, what they learned).

I'm not sure how best to record this in a Carpentries style. Should the notes to support the discussion appear in the 'Solution' part of the homework instead?

I have estimated what the questions, objectives and key points should be for each episode. The lead tutor for each episode should suggest changes/corrections/etc for these.